Drake Paul Anka

Paul Anka is the latest artist to beef with Drake

Pusha T, Meek Mill, Kendrick Lamar, Chris Brown, Common, Tyga, Jay-Z, Kanye West and... Paul Anka?

Of all the artists ever to beef with Drake, the 77-year-old crooner and Order of Canada appointee might be the most serious yet. He's certainly the oldest, if that counts for anything.

Anka, an Ottawa-born singer and songwriter famous for such 20th Century hits as "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" and "Lonely Boy," had some choice words for the 6ix God this week in response to news that Drake had allegedly removed their joint track "Don't Matter To Me" from his touring set-list.

The song in question featured previously-unreleased vocals from the late Michael Jackson, as recorded by Anka back in 1983.

It reached moderate commercial success upon its release as part of Drake's fifth studio album, Scorpion, in July of 2018, and had been part of the Toronto-born superstar's setlist during his most recent North American tour.

Eyebrows were raised, however, when Drake didn't perform the song during the first stop on his current U.K. tour in Manchester Monday night—despite the fact that artists do change up the songs they play rather often during tours.

British news outlets were quick to point out that the omission came shortly after the release of HBO's explosive documentary, Leaving Neverland, which focused on the allegations of two men who said Jackson had sexually assaulted them as young boys.

Similar to the backlash seen against R. Kelly following the release of Lifetime's mini-series Surviving R. Kelly, advocates have been calling upon radio stations to "mute" Michael Jackson in recent days with varying degrees of success.

Drake hasn't publicly weighed in on the issue, nor did he say anything about why the song featuring Jackson's vocals were admitted Monday.

Anka is angry either way.

"As far as Drake goes, in my eyes, I had an experience with Drake. Though it was somewhat fulfilling creatively, he was not honourable in keeping his promise with me or Irving Azoff in terms of what our business relationship was," said the accomplished artist to ET Canada in response to a question about Drake's scrapping of their song from his tour repertoire.

"So I have nothing really to say about Drake other than [that] he should respect his elders, and he didn’t keep his promises with me," he continued.

"So that's another news headline that you can have. He knows what I'm talking about, so do his people around him."

Brrrap!

Lead photo by

champagnepapi


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